Sports

Clippers' Blake Griffin healthy and hungry to compete

Clippers' Blake Griffin healthy and hungry to compete

Clippers forward Blake Griffin has been on the court conducting basketball workouts since the end of July, saying he's cleared any mental hurdles from last season's quad injury because of how intense those workouts have been. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

IRVINE – The injured leg that cost Blake Griffin most of last season and knocked him, and in a way, the Clippers, out of the postseason, didn’t keep the power forward from eating.

But Tuesday at UC Irvine, Coach Doc Rivers and Griffin’s teammates clearly saw a man who was hungry.

Griffin was a full participant during the team’s first practice of training camp, even shaking off substitutions to stay on the court.

“I don’t blame Blake,” Rivers said. “This is his first time he’s had red meat in front of him in a long time. So, I get it. If I was him, I would’ve done the same thing.”

To be honest, there wasn’t a lot of opportunity to dig into any red meat Tuesday. The Clippers opened camp with a teaching-intensive practice devoid of scrimmaging. Still, when you had a season like Griffin did, you take what you can get.

He missed 47 games last season with a quadriceps injury that lingered longer than expected. While that recovery sputtered, he also broke his hand punching a team employee – a mistake he recently apologized for in a letter written for The Players’ Tribune.

Griffin tried to return in time for the playoffs, but he re-injured the quad moments after Chris Paul broke his hand in Game 4 of their first-round series against Portland, essentially ending the Clippers’ season.

Griffin has been on the court conducting basketball workouts since the end of July, saying he’s cleared any mental hurdles because of how intense those workouts have been.

“My workouts, I’d say, there’s all this new equipment and all these new staff members and we do all this tracking and stuff. My workouts have always been a heavier load than games. Going on back-to-back days, playing pick-up, doing workouts, doing weights it’s more than any game or practice,” Griffin said. “I think the mental hurdle is passed.”

Griffin has embraced the Clippers’ attempts to use biomedical information, already citing the data generated by the player tracking devices.

“You can see your jump load, your stopping and braking,” he said. “The depth of the amount of knowledge you can attain now is crazy. It’s all useful.”

Eventually, maybe as soon as Wednesday, the Clippers will start to really play in practice, and Rivers said it’s his job to keep tabs on Griffin and Paul as they return from injuries.

“We have to be careful with that,” Rivers said. “He is 100 percent, but we want him to stay 100 percent. Chris too. We want those two guys. ... they don’t need to go every possession in practice. They get it. Give someone else a chance.”

Join the conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful
conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments,
we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful,
threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent
or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law,
regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.